New Chattanooga Indie Plans to Become a Cultural Cornerstone

After three years of planning, author, publisher, and now bookseller David Magee has opened the 5,000-square-foot Rock Point Books in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Chattanooga underwent a massive $120-million waterfront revitalization process, and part of the plan called for an independent bookstore. The "market was right," said Magee. "It's been a long time brewing. We've just been waiting to get all the pieces together."

Katherine Nielsen and Sarah Pfieffer

Magee partnered with Albert Waterhouse, the founder of a Chatanooga PR company, and hired manager Katherine Nielsen and assistant manager Sarah Pfieffer to open the 10,000-title general bookstore.

Rock Point offers a large selection of classic literature, Southern literature, new releases, nonfiction, history, and children's books. The lofty interior has 21-foot-high ceilings, light-colored fixtures, exposed brick walls, and a stage with seating for 150 people. Magee plans on hosting an active events calendar that will include musicians, as well as local and touring authors.

The official grand opening of Rock Point Books is slated for November 30 and will feature Will Campbell (Brother to a Dragonfly, Continuum International Publishing), an award-winning author who was active in the Mississippi civil rights movement in the 1960s. William Gay (Twilight, MacAdam Cage), a native Tennessean, will read the following night. There will also be a children's event on December 2.

David Magee, author, publisher, and now bookseller.

Magee had experience working as a news editor of a local paper in Oxford, Mississippi, and as a retailer, when he decided to become a full-time writer. After taking a few years to study the book industry and using guides like The Writer's Marketplace, he wrote several business books including Turnaround: How Carlos Ghosn Rescued Nissan (HarperCollins), The John Deere Way: Performance that Endures (Wiley), and Endurance: Winning Life's Majors the Phil Mickelson Way (Wiley).

Then, looking to apply a similar strategy of niche development to publishing, Magee moved to Tennessee and founded Jefferson Press, which most recently published MoonPie: Biography of an Out-of-This-World Snack. When he spoke to BTW, Magee had just completed a tour to several independent bookstores to promote Moonpie, including Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi; Park Road Books in Charlotte, North Carolina; Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Market Street Books in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Magee will, of course, also read at his own bookstore at an upcoming event.

Magee's interest in bookselling began when he was a teenager in Oxford, and Richard Howorth had just opened Square Books. "I was a lifelong resident of Oxford. It was an interesting life," he explained. "I knew members of the Faulkner family -- I was friends with John Grisham. But the most interesting part about it was Square Books and Richard Howorth." Magee eventually chronicled this experience in an essay in an anthology of Oxford writers called They Write Among Us: New Stories and Essays From the Best of Oxford Writers (Jefferson Press). "I wrote about how Square Books became a cornerstone of culture for the community," he said.

After becoming an author and publisher, the next natural step, he said, was becoming a bookseller to provide Chattanooga with the same kind of "cultural cornerstone" as Square Books does in Oxford.

"This indy bookstore is part of my vision of using the book to help change this great community," Magee explained. "The idea is that we aspire at Jefferson Press, through my own books, and through Rock Point Books, for the highest level.... We don't want to open as a sleepy, small town bookstore, but one in which buyers from across the country will want to stop in and be a part of." --Karen Schechner